n. - The Wizard

ing the new rules in written form). They can only be guessed from short notes here and there
in the later sources, and from careful comparisons of words occurring both in the Etymologies
and in The Lord the Rings.
I will not try to list in this foreword all the rules required to migrate the old ‘Noldorin’
words into Sindarin. A few examples are provided in the introductory chapter, and this complex
subject is also better presented elsewhere 5 . It should just be mentioned here that the present
dictionary attempts to handle all these difficult points seriously. I will leave it to the reader to
decide whether it is a success or a failure.
— ❦ —
While I was still struggling to achieve this work, a friend once asked me whether he should
wait for its completion, or whether he should try to obtain Ryszard Derdziński’s dictionary
instead. “Get both of them”, I immediately answered without hesitation. The fact that there are
now two Sindarin dictionaries in existence should not be regarded as a problem. They were done
for different purposes, reflecting the understanding and the ideas of there respective authors. To
this respect, they certainly enrich each other, presenting different points of view or different
solutions for problematic issues.
This work initially began as an independent project, whose primary aim was to provide a
complete and accurate Sindarin search engine on the Internet. The entries were produced automatically
in alphabetical order, whereas Ryszard Derdziński arranges them more consistently.
Ryszard’s dictionary also includes all the words marked as ‘Doriathrin’ and ‘Ilkorin’ in the
Etymologies 6 whereas mine only contains the ‘(Exilic) Noldorin’ forms. On the other hand,
this dictionary provides the phonetic transcription for all entries, and is also more consistent
(or so I believe) in its treatment of misreadings and in its normalization of ‘Noldorin’. Finally,
Ryszard’s dictionary gives Tolkien’s own etymologies, as appearing in the published texts; the
present lexicon includes David Salo’s etymological reconstructions, which sometimes slightly
differ from Tolkien’s explanations, but present several advantages for the study of the ‘ultimate’
form of the language. In conclusion, I hope that Tolkien’s fans will enjoy both dictionaries, and
regard them as complementary.
— ❦ —
As a final word, I would like to thank all the persons who made this work possible. For
the sake of brevity, I called it “my dictionary” above, but it would not have existed without the
efforts of many other peoples. In especial, Lisa Star (editor of Tyalië Tyelelliéva) and Helge
Kåre Fauskanger (webmaster of Ardalambion) gave me precious advices and encouragments at
the beginning of the project. David Salo sent me his own lexicons, and kindly accepted that
I use his reconstructed etymologies in this dictionary. My friend Cédric Fockeu (webmaster
of J.R.R. Tolkien en Version Française) offered his technical skill in scripting languages, as
well as disk space to host the original on-line search engine. My thanks are also addressed to
Ryszard Derdziński, Dorothea Salo, B. Philip Jonsson, Sébastien Mallet and the members of
the ELFLING mailing-list, for their support during this long project.
5. Helge Kåre FAUSKANGER’s Ardalambion web site on the Internet is a strongly recommended source of information.
Several articles are devoted to the study of the relations between ‘Noldorin’ and ‘Sindarin’. This
dictionary intensively relies on FAUSKANGER’s work (see pp. 9–11).
6. Respectively interpreted as ‘Silvan’ and ‘North Sindarin’ dialects in the later linguistic context; see especially
Ryszard DERDZIŃSKI’s comments on p. vi.
4 Hiswelókë – Special issue n o 1